blackmail. >> high crimes against the very structure of our constitutional state. >> the nixon team receives an overwhelming mandate from the american voters sweeping every state but one, massachusetts. >> as a result of the cover-up, richard nixon stayed in office a lot longer than he should have, but imagine if the american people had known in the summer of 1972 the extent to which richard nixon had participated in criminal enterprises. >> it's not just a desire for political power. it's a lust. i mean, that's what nixon said. i lust for power. >> the man in the middle in the watergate scandal. it's 34-year-old john wesley dean iii. >> i thought the cover-up was going to end after the election. i was wrong. >> i had no prior knowledge of the watergate break-in. >> it's going to get worse, much worse. >> seven men went on trial today in a washington federal court charged with the break-in and burglary of democratic national headquarters in the water building last june. >> the white house managed to contain the break-in at the watergate to only seven people, but john siricca knew that people had lied in this court and it pissed him off so what he wanted to do was to find out if there was anybody above those seven who should be going to jail, and he thought the only way for that to happen would be to give them tough sentences. >> as white house counsel, i was the desk officer of the cover-up. i get the information and gather it, and then i share it with the people who need to know. one of the things i suggest to the president is that it's very likely that the cover-up is going to blow. i don't know who is going to go, who is going to blow up, i tell him mccord, for example. mccord was worried. >> mccord decides he's going to blow the whistle. >> this was supposed to be the finale for the seven watergate defenders the day of sentencing but instead the case broke wide open again. >> mccord wrote judge siricca a letter. he said other people not yet named were involved in the break-in in the democratic national headquarters. he said political pressure was brought on defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. he says there was perjury in the trial testimony. >> the letter he released in siricca's courtroom was his last-ditch effort after being convicted. >> he didn't know that much, but he knew enough to know that it went hour hand that the trial was a fiasco. >> the mccord letter was the first real indication that we had that maybe this thing went high up in both the campaign and perhaps the nixon administration. >> watergate was really a non-issue with the public. it wasn't a campaign issue. it was a big story in "the washington post" when they could find something but most of the rest of the national press was paying no attention up until mccord's letter. >> i mean, he didn't say nixon himself was involved. he just brought it into the white house. >> nixon called me and said what you predicted that somebody was going to blow certainly appears to have happened, and i said i'm not surprised, but i said it's obviously not good. he said, well, why don't you go up to camp david and collect your thoughts about how we deal with it. you know, i said i'll talk to my wife. i think it's probably a good idea. but when i arrive up there, haldeman calls me and said, john, while you're at camp david, why don't you write the dean report. this was another attempt to get me to write a bogus dean report. way back in august 29th of the preceding year nixon implied that i had written a report or given him a report. i never even talked to the man about it. >> counsel to the president mr. dean, his investigation indicates that no one in the white house staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this very bizarre incident. >> the problem is they didn't want an honest report. they wanted a report that would make everything go away and be hunky-dory and those would be a lie. this is something we can't do, can't be done unless you do a fraud. i think that haldeman had been sort of sent out to test me and see where my loyalties might fall. he wasn't sure i could be loyal to richard nixon, and this was something that was very important to them, that there be blind loyalty to nixon that, you know, whatever nixon said was the final word. >> the unconditional loyalty is how people maintain their hold, and we see this in a lot of different contexts. we see it in authoritarian regimes. we see it in organized crime. we see it in cult. it's a powerful control mechanism that helps enable corruption and misconduct. >> deep in the middle of all this at camp david, the "l.a. times" issues a story based on jim mccord's talking to his neighbor who is an "l.a. times" reporter that i had somehow been involved in the planning of watergate. >> the the "los angeles times" without disclosing its source said mccord named white house lawyer john dean and deputy campaign director jeff mcgruder as having advanced knowledge of the operation. >> the story in the "l.a. times" were defamiliar trip. i certainly hadn't, as mccord has suggested, ordered the watergate break, but after the arrest i had gotten increasingly involved, and i had become a target. while i'm at camp david, it's really the first time that i'm out of the daily line of fire, and i had mo with me. i'm up there with my wife, and so we took long walks in the woods. i very clearly remember what dawned on me that i would have to live with the cover-up the rest of my life. that would have been frightening to me to try to pull that off. i just got married. it's going to ruin my life. i'm convinced the moment is here. we've got to end this. 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lawyer who was a former assistant attorney in new york and now primarily a defense attorney. i asked him to come no my office to figure out who has done what and who has done what exposure, and it it was mcgruder, mitchell, haldeman and ehrlichman and yours truly. i tried to take that list to haldeman and indicate that we're all in trouble. be very careful once the tube is out of the tube. it's very hard to get black. >> on april 157 i meet with the president at 9:00 p.m. that night. he's in hickstive chair in the executive office billing. he is smoking a cigar and i offer me a thing to and i said no changes. i want the president to solve this. i'm not trying to set him up. i think his aides have il-served him. it was an unusual conversation. he had a yellow pad in his lap, and he took me through a bunch of leading questions like do you remember the conversation with had by paying these guys off and i told him that at a point where i was just joking. >> nixon got up at one point and went over to the corner of his office which struck me as odd and then he asked me a question. i spokes to colson about clemency for howard hunt. that could have been obstruction of justice, is that right? they were unlike the normal conversations i've had with him, and i thought at that moment, well, maybe he's recordings. >> i'm stunned and i realized that he indeed is much deeper into this thing that i saw. the next day i was called to the president owes off the. as the door was being opened for me to walk into the oval office, walking out of the opposite side of the oval office and chuckling were highlanderman and ehrlichman. it was up of my more memorable meetings with the president. >> i've drafted somelers and he step esthem across his desk. >> he gave me a blank resignates letter, actually two of them. have i prom. i understood the way the white house worked that people at the top didn't take responsibility but rather blames sub-else, quota scapegoat. it was standard operating procedure. >> i it -- asked about that conversation, i realized xwrf in -- this thing has to end and i'm going to be the one who blows this all up. >> the more they convinced them that together they had to do something which is to more or less make things right, he knew that if that department work he was going to end up in jail. >> i was convinced that we were in a pitched battle where they would try to take me down but involved to solve this problem i'd have to take them down. >> i knew at that time i was blowing up my career, knew future, butty did i sided that i with a create a statement. some may help or think i'llblep -- anybody who knows that don't know the true facts nor understands our system of justice. i'm blakely stating i'm not going to -- i >> the reason that these powerful individuals find someone to scape gate is they need to out themselves because they know the things they have done and they are petrified for that information to come out. the reason they go for loyal individuals like donald went for someone like myself is because he never thought that i would come out and testify against him, to out him, to expose him for the conman, the fraud, the cheat that he legitimacy is, so there's a tremendous similarity between richard nixon and donald trump in that respect. >> dean became a bigger and bigger player until the point where nixon fired him as kind of a sacrificial lamb. >> good evening, the biggest white house scandal in a century broke wide open. the president's white house heel counsel john deep has been fired. >> nixon realized that i was going to blow up the scandal. >> johner ickman, the president's chief domestic adviser has resigned. >> that became a key headline and one of the pivoting points of watergate. >> one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, i accepted the rigs nations of two of my closest associates in the white house, bob haldeman, john ehrlichman. >> why was the president getting rid of his closest advisers? you have one of two explanations. one, the president was not in control of his own white house, or, two, the president is engaged in damage control and it would be up to congress to figure it out. >> in any organization the man at the top must bear. responsibility. reason, or fun. daring, or thoughtful. sensitive, or strong. progress isn't either or progress is everything. ♪ you know real chili never has beans. you know which pizza is eaten with a fork and a knife... and which one is definitely not. you know a cappuccino is for the morning and an espresso is for the afternoon. you know how to answer "sparking or still" in over 12 different languages. you'll try anything that's not currently alive... unless of course it's highly recommended. the delta skymiles® american express card. if you travel, you know. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. we thought we had planned carefully for our 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to check that power if we put someone in there that's unwilling to do that. >> you can have a functioning democracy in that kind of situation because democracy requires accountability. >> before i was fired by nixon and then after the time of the watergate burglars, the senate created a select committee to investigate watergate. >> the senate spent much of the day today in an old darn fashioned party line wrangle over the select committee to make a full investigation of the watergate case. >> my name is david dorsen and was the chief assistant count of the watergate committee. the creation of the senate committee followed the "the washington post" or the calls on watergate. it followed the trial before judge sirica. the vote to set up the select committee by the senate was 77-0. sflmp now the country could not vote 77-0 to keep american-of-american flag. there would be some. >> he has to convince the american people that the system is work and if part of the system broke down, another group can come in and make sure that it runs correctly. >> howard baker was the vice chair, senator from tennessee, a conservative republican. >> and the chief counsel of the committee was a fellow named sam dash. he was looking for three people to run the investigations, i had no idea that this was going to go this high. no idea. >> our role is to make close closures and inform the american people through televised hearings. we had the power of subpoena and the power to put people under oat but congress does not have a prosecutorial funk. it's only to investigate, legislate and to inform >> by march 1973 you had the smart select committee pushing for hearings. >> but nixon by and large did not want aides to testify. >> people were very interested in the senate hearings and whether nixon was going to claim executive privilege to keep his top aides from testifying. >> a president can't use executive privilege to shield his own criminal conduct. >> nixon was upped pressure of republicans, and many voters who had voted him in -- the-of-but they were able to increase the pressure on the white house, and so the president waived executive privilege forries goodrich white house officials will testify before the special senate committee investigating the bugging and break-in of democratic national headquarters last june. there was a dramatic change on his previous silence and his refusal to let white house aides testify. >> i was told very early i was looked at as a witness, and he said i think you should get i mount and i'll go to the senate and get it. >> sam dash says that don was will to talk to us. we're not going to deliver to nick that -- and sort of laying out or everything. i took the incident of the bungled break-in. he worked quietly with mow to get enough evidence to immunize me. >> as it became evident through the senate watergate investigation, deep's roll was bigger and bigger and bigger this a he was obviously part. when john dean was getting ready to testify i asked his lawyer and he said, yes, he's going to implicate the president of theouts. he was going to have explosive testimony. 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(burke) we should. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ y. in the spring of 1973 before he was going to be interviewed, before the senate committee, john dean was touted as a great important witness. >> i'm the link and linchpin to the key players. i have no question that i made it to the top of nixon's enemies list. >> many americans said, well, look, he's just a rat. he's just trying to protect himself. he's lying. >> i'm getting death threats and about a week before my testimony i have two marshals with me 24-7. they literally move in the basement of our house and that went on for about 18 months. >> the senate select committee said the hearings be televised because it has a very important role to play in informing the public. >> the very confusion and story of political espionage and eves dropping that has become to be known as watergate today came under the scrutiny of the united states senate. >> the senate hearings, they really result in what they called the summer of watergate. >> every single network shut down its regular programming and broadcast hearings. >> now from our studios in washington. here is abc news correspondent frank reynolds. >> good morning. at this hour a select committee of the united states senate is about to begin public hearings on something called watergate. >> the effect on pop culture is people were following is obsessively. >> mr. liddy had a plan where the leaders would be abducted and detained in a place like mexico and that they would then be returned to this country at the end of the convention. >> i'm going to ask the audience to please refrain from any kind of demonstrations. >> i saw a pop culture develop, and it was just amazing. >> the rule against laughter does not apply in the evening. >> no one has asked me, but would i like to make it clear right now that i had no knowledge whatever of the watergate cover-up. >> well, senator irving became a folk hero, kind of an iconic figure. >> there's nowhere that says the president has the right to suspend the fourth amendment. >> and when irving gottage today, his eyebrows start jumping around and his jaw started churning. >> remember the old days when the television repair man would come to your house and adjust your set by the test pattern, now he does it by senator irvin's eyebrows. >> millions of people all watching the hearings at the same time. >> i hope that whatever comes out they get it over it, it comes out and they teach us some kind of a lesson. >> it was a shared experience that allowed everyone to be on the level playing field. >> wonder if justice will be done or will be done. >> john dean was the most important witness and was eagerly awaited. >> before i testified you started assembling the testimony. i was being barred from the white house by my files so it was pretty much from memory. i got all the newspaper clippings i could to try to trigger my memory of events. >> this is my handwritten testimony. starts with page 1 and it was done on legal sheets. and it matches up pretty well with what became the final draft. >> this is the final cut and paste of the final draft where that looks like the section of mo's type. >> m typing of it, her section of it is where she learned the story. >> if you men said where you were going you would have had lamps over your head and none of this would have ever happen. >> had i been told i was going to read my entire testimony it never would have been 60,000 words. >> about a week before my testimony my house was staked out by the media. >> living inside a media frenzy is awful. you can't make a move without a swarm. >> the press were camped out in front of his house so he couldn't get out and so i snuck his laundry out and back over the back fence for him and i had done this once or twice a week. >> and my lawyer instructed me not to talk to the media. he did not want my testimony out. >> do you think he should go to jail. >> i was sent out to the stake him out at his house to get a picture of him coming and going just to see the famous counsel to the president. turns out he was locked in the house and was not going to come out and let us see him. i just went and knocked on the door and he had a mail slot and i opened the mail slot and i looked in to see if i could see him and he looked back at me through the mail slot. >> so we had a conversation and rather than open the door, because that would bring all of the other media immediately up to the house and wanting to talk. >> i was looking for any kind of scoop at all. i wasn't going to get a picture. >> and he told me something. i'm going to get a hair cut and wear my glasses. >> i thought that's nothing. you have to give me more. >> and then when i drove back to the office i thought, you know, it's optics, he's working on his presentation to the public. he needs to present himself as someone with gravity, with weight. >> he was stressed. on the one and he owed his loyalty to the president and he also had an ethics conflict in his own mind about nixon not doing the right thing and he called me on the phone and he said barry. he said i would hike to talk to your dad. could you arrange that so i got john dean and my father senator barry goldwater together in my house and john asked my father what he should do and he said you've got to tell the truth and nate the son of a bitch. >> everybody was watching. everybody was talking about it. and john dean is the one that turned the dial. >> the council will call the first witness. >> i'm sure he made everybody in the country think will i be in that place in my life where i have to choose between right and wrong, and i personally wondered if i would be as brave as he was, and i thought he was brave because i questioned whether i would have done what he did. you know, defying a president, imagine. >> by the time i testified, it was clear it was me versus nixon. i'm going to show richard nixon he's a horrendous liar. i'm going to show he was 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you may be eligible to recieve up to a $1000 dollars from t-mobile. and you should listen to me. i'm a british actor. were awaiting the testimony of john w. dean iii due to testify this morning at the watergate hearings resume. >> the senate hearings were televised around the clock. the public did become engaged. there were arguments around the country between those who are for nixon and those against nixon, but everything changed once really john dean went up and testified. >> i sincerely wish i could say it's my pleasure to be here today but i think can you understand why it's not. >> it was just unbelievable that you could hear a pin drop when he testified. >> i began by telling the fact there was a cancer growing on the presidency, and if the cancer was not removed, the president himself would be killed by. >> i did watch every single second of john dean's testimony. >> he's just doing it as dryly as though he's reading the telephone book, and he's saying these awful things that he's uncovering the white house. >> he was in effect making a sales pitch. he said that the operation he had developed would be totally removed from the campaign and carried out by professionals. plans called for squads, kidnapping teams, electronic surveillance. i recall him saying the girls would be high class and be invested in the business. >> i knew my senate testimony contained hundreds if you will of front page stories. they would have been expressive standing alone, but here they all were in a narrative. >> i was informed about a project that had been going on before i arrived. they called for bugging, burglarizing, male covers and the like. i was instructed by mr. haldeman to see what i could do to get the plan implemented. i told the president about the fact that there were money demands being made by the seven convicted defendants. he asked me how much it would cost. i told him could i only make an estimate that it might be as high as $1 million or more. he told me that that was no problem. the issuing of the so-called dean report is was first time i began to think about the fact that i might be being set up in case this whole thing came tumbling or crumbling down at a later time. >> the president made this statement. i had no prior none of the watergate operation. >> well, sir, i happen to believe he did have knowledge. >> this turned the lights on out there in the country. i mean, everything he said was a jolt. it was shocking in the sense that help was saying that the president had participated in the cover-up. that he had authorized the payment of hush money, that he had authorized the grants of clemency, that he was aware of what was going on with the burglars clear as a bell, lucid testimony that put the finger right on the president. >> you've got to understand my frame of mind when i'm testifying in front of the senate. the white house is attacking me. they are trying to discredit me. i'm at war with the white house, so i'm using the tactics of politics myself with my senate testimony with something like dropping the enemies list knowing the press is going to overplay it. >> there was also maintained what was called an enemies list which was rather extensive and continually being updated. >> the enemies list had endless names of people who publicly opposed nixon and his policies. >> it was explosive. it was dramatic. you couldn't breathe if you were in the root you couldn't believe what you were hearing. >> i'm quite aware of the fact that in some circumstances it's going to be my word against one man's word, my word against two men, my word against three men and probably in some cases my word against four men, but i'm prepared to stand on my word and the truth and the knowledge at the facts i have, and i know the truth is my ally in this, and i think ultimately the truth will come out. >> i think this is our fifth day. >> i was relieved is probably the one word that best captures it. >> john dean was the first member of the cover-up team to lay bare that there was a cover-up and that the president knew about it. >> john was coming in and conferencing to having been involved in the cover-up. >> he went before the public and admitted things that he did were unsavory, that he himself had crossed the line and admitted that in some ways, you know, he -- he was like nixon, and when he admitted it, the truth is you began to believe him even more. >> but maybe 50% more didn't believe dean and nixon's denials, which of course were being issued vociferously at that point. >> the time has come for me to speak out about the charges made and to provide a perspective on the issue for the american people. i had no prior knowledge of the watergate break-in. i neither took part in nor knew about any of the subsequent cover-up activities. i neither authorized nor encouraged subordinates to engage in illegal or improper campaign tactics. that was and that is the simple truth. >> even as credible as dean's testimony was, the president said not a word is true. and when it was john dean's word against the president's word, well, who was going to believe john dean? >> john dean is a truth teller. and whistle-blowers and truth tellers are so dangerous and threatening when they speak out because it's not just that they are speaking truth to power, they're giving permission to other people in the group to speak out. >> after john dean testified, there was an inkling that maybe things had been recorded in the white house complex. >> the president almost from the outset began asking me a number of leading questions, which was somewhat unlike his normal conversational relationships i'd had with him, which made me think that the conversation was being taped and a record was being made to protect himself. >> he indicated in his testimony that he thought perhaps he had been recorded. and that little statement, that little statement led to senate watergate committee investigators to ask about the possibility of taping. 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jurassic-themed at-home activities. join over 3 million members and start enjoying rewards like these, and so much more in the xfinity app! and don't miss jurassic world:dominion in theaters june 10th. thing were heating up after john dean testified. was the president telling the truth? >> i had no prior knowledge of the watergate break-in. >> or was john dean telling the truth? >> i happen to believe that he did have knowledge. >> so i talked to deep throat, unknown for 33 years who you got to talk to alexander butterfield. >> he had this key role in the haldeman-nixon circle. and he was in charge of what is called internal security, which means wiretapping. >> i was the deputy white house chief of staff, chief administrative officer, and director of internal security. >> i then said to sam dash, you've got to interview alexander butterfield. >> we put butterfield before the committee. and i think we thought that it might be an interesting investigation, and we might uncover some wrongdoing. but nobody anticipated what happened. >> there was a surprise witness at the watergate hearings today, and he made a dramatic disclosure. >> we didn't know who he was or why he was coming. we never heard of him. >> and so the mystery guest turns out to be alexander p. butterfield. he has been described as one of the half dozen people at the white house closest to the oval office. >> will you stand and raise your right hand? >> i knew -- i knew it was just going to be huge. >> mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the office of the president? >> i wasn't sure what would happen to me, but one thing i did know is i had always been honest. >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> did he say there were tapes? what? >> yeah, talk about a bombshell. >> in february of 1971, the president told bob haldeman, his chief of staff that he wanted to install some listening devices around the white house. haldeman said it was up to me to decide who should install these devices. i chose the secret service. >> the system was designed only to tape conversations in which nixon participated. and so when he would enter a room there was a taping system, they would flip the on switch for the system in that room. when he left the room, they would turn it off. >> why did he want the tape recorder? >> the listening devices were to record as much of the administration's business as possible. that's why we had the listening devices in so many different areas. nixon installed the taping system so he could write the greatest memoirs of any president of the united states. and nixon was fascinated by the memoirs of the people like de gaulle and others, and wanted to show himself as a great world leader. >> the president did tell me at one point, along with haldeman, that no one was to ever learn about this taping system. >> alex butterfield had indeed confirmed my suspicion that i had been recorded. but more than my conversations had been recorded. everybody's conversations had been recorded. i was delighted to learn this information. >> one last question. one therefore had to reconstruct the conversations at any particular date, what would be the best way to reconstruct those conversations, mr. butterfield, in the president's oval office? >> well, in the obvious manner, mr. dash. to obtain the tape and play it. >> the president and the congress tonight are actually on a collision course. he will not give them any white house recordings. >> i realized if that information ever comes out, it's the end of the nixon presidency. good evening. in recent months, members of my administration and officials of the committee for the reelection of the president, including some of my closest friends have been charged with involvement in what has come to be known as the watergate affair. i will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purge